December 23, 2005

Report of covert operation….long w/updates

I haven’t posted in over a week! Very unlike me! I hope everyone’s doing well and has all their Christmas stuff taken care of.I’ve been asking Ian for several weeks now what he is going to ask Santa for Christmas…he has said “I don’t know yet” several times. Finally I decided its cutting it close, so earlier this week I told him “Well, do you just want Santa to surprise you?” He said “yeah!” So, I had it all planned out what to get him, I have no money left so I had to budget….and then he came home from school yesterday (Thursday). Yesterday was their last day of school, he came home and the first thing he said was “Santa stopped by our school today.” I said “Oh yeah?” and he said “Yeah, and we have to see Santa, its an EMERGENCY!” So I laugh it off “an emergency?” and he said “Yeah, Santa asked if we all sent our letters in or visited him, and asked if we were good or bad.” and he said that he told Santa he was good, of course, then he said said “I told Santa I didn’t know what I wanted.” So I asked what Santa said to that, and he said “Santa said I should think fast cause Christmas is in couple days.” So, he told me he thought about it all day long, haha, and now he knows what he wants…so I ask him what he wants…and its not what I planned to get him, lol. So I made other suggestions by saying “Well, ya know, its so close to Christmas that you might need to have other ideas for Santa, they might not have time to make something like that very quickly” and he said “That’s all I want and I thought about it.” So, crap, he wants a Power Ranger SPD Megazord…wtf is that? No, I haven’t seen the commercials Ian, yes I know they’ve been on TV Ian, no I missed all of them, Ian. I did see a commercial about Power Rangers Mystic Force…oh, that show doesn’t start until February, well I didn’t know that. It has to be SPD Power Rangers, huh? Why not a _____ or a _____. Ugh! So, I called my step-mom because there was no way I could afford to drive to town (about an hour 1 way) several times in the next few days, and also make it to the family Christmas party on Saturday…so I had to figure out a game plan, so called the step-mom for reinforcements….she and I would take Ian to see Santa, get his pic done and then after he tells Santa what he wants, we’ll ask him again what he told Santa, in case he changed his mind in the next hour or two, and then Grannie would take him to play at the play area in the mall and I’d go on the hunt….sounded good, we could be back in 3-4 hours, which would be around 7 p.m. So started Operation Wait-Till-The-Last-Damn-MinuteHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHA!

We got there, saw Santa, he was a nice guy, the Santa the year before seemed out of it by this same time of year…or he was drunk or high, who knows, but he wasn’t very responsive or talkative. First thing Ian did was run up to Santa and hug him, lol, then we had to convince him to turn around for pics, lol. Santa talked to him while they waited for the photo to process/print whatever, and then I had to remind Ian to tell him what he wants for Christmas…and Ian forgot, so dumb me reminded him…power rangers….crap! So Ian said “Oh yeah, power rangers!” That’s all he said, he didn’t say the megazord…but Santa said “Oh yes, Power Rangers, SPD right?” Ian’s eyes lit up, it was a great moment to see that, haha, he turned to me and said “Santa knows what I want already!” haha. So we thanked Santa and wished him a Merry Christmas, and went on to phase 2 of Operation Wait-Till-The-Last-Damn-Minute….

Grannie took Ian to the play area and he didn’t even notice me leaving…First I headed to Kay Bee Toys…they didn’t even HAVE any Power Rangers.Went back to Grannie and grabbed the keys and my cell phone for radio contact, Grannie had me covered with diversions for Ian…she makes a great decoy

Went out of the mall and headed for Toys-R-Us which was right across the parking lot…nothing. Made Radio contact and told of change of route to the next stop, Wal-Mart….they had only the new Mystic Force power rangers…next stop, K-Mart…they had some of the SPD Power Rangers, but not the big Megazord Ian wanted, so off to the next store…7 stores in total, and my search came up fruitless, my legs were tired, and being out in the cold has made my throat itchy and nose runny…so, defeated, I headed back to base.

Ian had at this point eaten dinner already, so I picked up Grannie and Ian and we headed to one last stop…I broke down and asked Ian “Well, Ian, you know you didn’t tell Santa you wanted a Megazord Power Ranger.” he said “But Santa knew I wanted SPD” and I said “yeah, but you only said you wanted a Power Ranger, you didn’t tell him the megazord.” and he said the one thing that hopefully lets me off the hook….”well if I get any power ranger SPD from Santa I’ll be happy because he knew I wanted SPD Power Rangers.” So, Operation Wait-Till-The-Last-Damn-Minute was revised to Operation Thank-Goodness-Lets-Get-The-Heck-Out-Of-Here commenced…Grannie mentioned “I need to go to the grocery store to pick some stuff up” and I told Ian to go with Grannie because I needed to get more wrapping paper. So, she dropped me off, I found 2 power ranger SPDs that “transformed” or morphed into other things, the selection was even smaller than when I first went there, and so I grabbed both and some wrapping paper and left…mission somewhat accomplished….finally…ugh. Did I say be home in 3-4 hrs? By 7 p.m.? We left here at 4 p.m., got home at 9:40 p.m….

Hopefully we won’t have to go through this again next year.

Well, aside from that now being taken care of, today I have lots to do!

Wash laundry so we have something nice to wear for our Christmas eve family get-together. We only get together with the whole family like this 2 times a year, 4th of July weekend and Christmas eve, its our tradition.

Make the dessert and appetizer I’m bringing to the family party (pot luck).

Finish making the hand-made stuff, last minute touches.

wrap the gifts

Clean the living room, put away all the darn wrapping items, get Ian’s old toys put away, dust and vacuum, and FINALLY enjoy the tree up, a clean floor with presents under the tree.

I talked to a couple of my ex’s sisters (I still am close with some of his family) and Ian and I will head out to visit them after Christmas, on Wednesday. So, I told them that if any of them hear from my ex, tell them what day and time we’ll be there and if he wants to see his son, he’ll show up. No one’s heard from him in about a week or two, so they said they’ll be on the look out. I hope for Ian’s sake that he shows up…not looking forward to it, but what else can I do…absolutely nothing.

I haven’t seen my Country Boy in a week. I saw him last Friday for about 10 minutes in the morning, then he had to go to work. His work is really running him ragged, and its starting to really affect our relationship. In the last 6 months that we’ve been seeing each other, he was a busy man to begin with as he has a farm and helps his mom with her farm, and then works and is on-call 24/7….but in the last month and a half they have been making him work tons of overtime and really taking advantage of his being on-call, and also sending him to other plants for stuff. He’s supposed to be sent out to Ohio for 10-14 days…he finally is supposed to get his son for Christmas, and they are sending him away. He has one personal day saved up that he said if his ex shows up with his son, he’s taking that personal day because there is no way he’s missing Christmas with his son. He told me he was going to bring something he got Ian earlier this week, but they sent him to several different plants and he never made it here all week, he called me Wednesday night and said he just got off a 16 hour shift, and he was going to see if he could bring it by Thursday morning because at that point he didn’t know if they were sending him to Ohio Friday or Saturday…his mom was going to pick up his son. Well, the last time I talked to him was Wednesday night before he got home from work, it was 10 p.m. and he was supposed to work till 11 and still had to be in to work at his next regular shift at 7 a.m., after pulling 16 hrs PLUS he was called to do something over the internet for his work earlier Wednesday morning…well Thursday morning I waited to hear from him…never heard from him, so I called his cell and his home phone that afternoon and left a message to call me when he can…no phone call. I waited again today to see him…nothing, not even a phone call. Its to the point where I get very sad when I don’t know what’s going on, can’t talk to him or see him. I could deal with the not seeing him part if we at least had time to talk on the phone, but by the time he gets home from working, he’s so damn tired he’s falling asleep on the phone, snoring and all! He complains that this new management has ruined lots of things for him, and they will have to deal with him and many other employees who are going through the same thing because this year they renegotiate their contract (union) and Country Boy is on the committee. He bitches that “they’ll be sorry they screwed with this hick”. The new management isn’t from around here, they’re from some big city, and so he thinks they figure everyone who works at the plant are a bunch of stupid hicks. Not sure if that’s true or not, but that’s Country Boy’s take on it. I’m torn between leaving and staying with him, if he was just OK to us then I’d have left a long time ago, but he’s good to Ian and I…the few times we can spend together. but he used to be able to at least call during the day at some point, he said they’ve been getting so bad that he can’t even spend time with his son on the weekends because of how much work he’s done. He hasn’t had a day off at all in 2 months…because they either call him to work from home through the internet programming something or another, or they send him in to the plant. And you can SEE how tired he is, he walks a lot slower, he’s gained weight and he looks pale and not good. He hasn’t been able to see his son more than 16 hours in a weekend visit because they send him off to work…its hell on him, and so part of me wants to stay because its not completely his fault, but then part of me just thinks he just doesn’t have the time to try to be in a relationship, and I think of saying lets just be friends for now, no committment, no worrying about trying to call me or keep me happy, you have other things to worry about, if things let up and you still want to see me, then we’ll try again later….but I don’t know. But, I haven’t seen him in a week and he is supposed to be sent to Ohio to work at plant for 10-14 days, depending on how long it takes to finish whatever job they have for him to do there, so I probably won’t see him during that time, and he also misses out on seeing his son. And yes, they are starting him over at that plant OVER CHRISTMAS WEEKEND! So, he’s pretty pissed about that, of course. I didn’t hear from him yesterday or this morning, usually if he can’t see me he will call me on the way to work, most of the days in the last week he just didn’t get up on time because he got home so late from the night before or they woke him up in the middle of the night to do something online that they needed done. Two times he called because of deer, he hit a deer trying to come see me on Monday, and then Wednesday he called me from the road, a semi plowed 3 deer and there was a nasty mess on the road and traffic was stopped. He apologized profusely, and said he’d try to see me tomorrow (Thursday). That was the last time I heard from him. Argh. Frustrated, sad, but what can I do but wait and see.

Anyway, aside from that, hoping to be able to enjoy my Christmas weekend with my son, hoping he doesn’t have any questions about why he hasn’t seen or heard from his dad in over a month now…I hope he enjoys hisChristmas.

Everyone have a safe and happy holiday weekend…

Merry Christmas!12-22-2005 – he literally just ran up and hugged Santa at first, haha.

And finally, just for the sake of showing it off…Ian’s first picture with Santa – 20 months old – Santa doesn’t look too thrilled either, haha.